Loose Talk
by HalfshellVenus1
Summary: Gen Humor: Why oh why does Dean never know when to shut up?


Title: **Loose Talk**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Characters: Sam and Dean (**Gen, Humor**)

Rating: T (language)

Summary: Why oh why does Dean never know when to shut up?

Author's Notes: Happy birthday to deirdrec, unhobbityhobbit and erinrua! I hope this gives you all a lift for your special day. Also for my **switch25 **table, this quite obviously is "Tongue."

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Sometimes it's like riding around with his grandmother, if he still had one, when Sam starts in on Dean with all the usual criticisms:

"Chew with your mouth closed!"

"Why do have to be such an ass?"

and most of all, "Why did you say that? What gets _into_ you, Dean?"

Sam thinks Dean's too blunt. Or inappropriate. Or something… He thinks it a _lot_, and then he says it, and Dean thinks maybe _that's_ starting to become inappropriate or at least rude, but Sam doesn't buy it. _"Jesus Dean, you're twenty-eight now. You've got to stop saying every damn thing that comes into your head."_

The thing is, though, that Dean actually does try. Mostly. He really does.

There are times when Sam says or does something that stomps up and down on every splintered vestige of Dean's soul… and Dean sucks it up and tells Sam to do what makes _him_ happy.

There are moments when Dean taps into his empathy instead of his impatience, and he handles a situation _sensitively_—gets a scared little boy talking, or hears what Sam isn't saying.

Okay, he's back to Sam again, but Dean's sure there are other examples, other people besides Lucas where he's been a poster-boy for good communication.

It's just that there are too many times where he kind of… blurts. Or snarks. Or whatever it is, those unplanned moments where he finds himself talking and then he's said it—said _something_—and by the time it comes around to his ears it's already too late.

_"You've got a smile that lights up a room, anybody ever tell you that?"_

He'd only gotten run out of town for that, not beaten up or jailed. But he and Sam had been fighting and Sam had left, and he was kind of depressed about the whole thing. A lot depressed, to be honest.

_"We talking, like, misdemeanor kind of trouble? Or uh…"squeal like a pig" kind of trouble?"_

Yeah. That one hadn't been smart. He'd been lucky—the cops had overlooked it, hadn't sunk to the level of what he was accusing them of. Thank god.

So in general, even Dean has to admit that a lot of his worst moments happen when authority is involved. It's like he sees a uniform, and his mouth takes on a life of its own—usually in a really sassy, _stupid_ direction. His father would have _killed_ Dean if he'd ever heard him talk like that; that's not how his boys were _raised_. So what is it that makes Dean get that way, then? Rebellion? Passive-aggression? Deep-seated self-destructiveness?

It's a mystery.

Bars and restaurants bring out another kind of bad, according to _some_ people.

_"Hey, sweetheart, if you're the question then I'm the answer." _

That one had earned him a drink in the face and Sam hissing "Jesus, shut up you moron!" No coming back after that, not when the other women in the bar had all seen it too. He'd been done for the evening barely ten minutes in, thanks to that Serena chick (or whoever she was) and Sam's penchant for self-righteous drama. Whatever.

"We hunt demons. Demons and spirits." Uh-oh. "Sam here, he's my brother. He's psychic, kind of like you. Well, not really like you, but see, he thinks you're a murderer, and he's afraid that he's going to become one himself, 'cause you're all part of something that's terrible. And I hope to hell that he's wrong, but I'm starting to get a little scared that he might be right."

God damn it.

Now, that one was totally _not_ Dean's fault—he could feel the words being ripped out of him like a grappling hook being dragged up through a riverbed of clay. He'd tried so hard to keep from talking, but the words kept pouring out, kept dredging up truths that were better off never seeing the light of day.

He wished Sammy hadn't been there to hear that last part. The rest really didn't matter, but the part about Sammy he just never meant to say.

_"__Did Tony mention anything, you know, unusual to you? In the days before his death? Weird noises, uh, visions, anything like that?__"_

Now honestly, was that so weird? Maybe kind of unsubtle, or out-of-place, but not screamingly obvious or anything, right? Even to a grieving widow?

So what the hell had Sam's "Dean, shut the fuck up already" face been all about? Seriously, Sam overreacts sometimes, Dean swears.

They've stopped off at a mini-mart along east I-80, getting dinner on the road.

"Hot dogs are two for ninety-nine cents," the bullnecked cashier informs them.

"Aw thanks, but I was planning to die of poisoning on a _different_ day," Dean says.

The guy is over the counter like an Olympic hurdler, suddenly so close that Dean sees a vein throbbing right there on his forehead.

_Oops… _

In Natchez, Mississippi, Hubert Tinseld watches the world pass by his living room window. Five years into retirement, this is all he's got.

There's that Williamson boy, the cocky quarterback who dumped Tinseld's daughter the week before Prom. He doesn't look so hot now with those extra eighty pounds. It's got to be rough having a wife who'll sleep with anyone who crosses her orbit.

Damn fitting, Tinseld thinks, her going from Miss Popular to becoming the town slut— but then again, he'd made sure of that.

Joey Mittleton had tried to set the library on fire in high school, and there was no convincing anyone that he hadn't burned his own house down himself last year.

Mittleton was 1997, and there were a few others around then to whom Tinseld had given their due. He pulls out a yearbook, leafs through the pages. _Missy Hamilton_—Southern Belle snob, works at a truck stop now. Poetic justice. _Clifton Stalding_—tried to buy test answers, currently in jail for fraud. _Bobby Waters_—bullied freshman, now in prison being someone's jail-cell bitch.

And this one—_Dean Winchester_. Big-mouthed pretty-boy jackass with an attitude problem who either didn't come to class or couldn't bother to shut up when he was finally there.

_Winchester_. The word rolls through Tinseld's mind like everyday poetry.

_Wonder how he likes that Babbling Bonehead curse I laid on his tongue all those years ago? _

_-------- fin --------_


End file.
